Project managers or planners typically work with a project plan timeline, which is a set of tasks that are associated with an overall project or objective, and that are displayed over a timeline within a user interface. Project managers typically define the project plan timeline, and thus, typically define how tasks are distributed within the project plan timeline.
Traditionally, a system visually depicts task progress within the project plan timeline as a shaded region of a rectangle, or other visual representation of a task, that is displayed within the project plan timeline. This is based on a visual analogy of mercury filling a channel. But this visual presentation of task progress only shows the latest task progress that has been reported. Further, this visual presentation of task progress does not indicate when the latest task progress was reported. Even though the system might have access to details of other incremental task progress updates that have previously been reported for a task, the system typically does not have a way to visually depict such details within the project plan timeline.